Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has died, apparently of natural causes at the age of 61

MM was an outstanding drummer. In addition to seeing him play as part of the JHE in 1967, I also saw him sit in various times with the Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore East. There were strong connections between the JA and the JHE. Jack Casady frequently played with JH (see e.g. "Voodoo Chile on Electric Ladyland", and a cut on "JH live at Winterland") and MM relates in his book on his years with JH that JH asked Jack to replace Noel Redding in the JHE but that Jack was loyal to the JA. Anyway, MM would come sit in with the JA.

The late show at the Fillmore began at 11:30 and usually had two bands before the JA, so the JA typically would come on stage around 0200 and MM would join in around 0400 with the set typically finishing around 0530 (which was cutting it close for me sneaking back into the house before my folks awoke). This was not a problem when the JA drummer was Spencer Dryden, but Spencer's replacement Joey Covington apparently felt insecure-- one time a separate drum set was put out on stage for MM to play even as JC continued to play. Eventually JC backed off and insincerely introduced "Our friend Mitch Mitchell" to the crowd.

The rapport between Mitch, Jack on bass and Jorma on guitar (Paul Kantner doing fine on rythhm guitar too) was extraordinary.

Rabbi Gavriel, left, and Rivkah Holtzberg were killed in one of the worst terrorist attacks in Indian history. Here, they're seen attending to the wedding of a local Jewish couple.By Joshua Runyan and Motti SeligsonNov 28, 2008 11:00 AM

Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the beloved directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai, were killed during one of the worst terrorist attacks to strike India in recent memory.

Jewish communities around the world reacted with shock to the loss of the couple, who were killed Thursday at their Chabad House during an apparent standoff between Indian military forces and terrorists.

Their toddler son, Moshe, managed to escape with his nanny some hours before Indian commandos stormed their building, known as the Nariman House, in the popular touristy neighborhood of Colaba. The Associated Press reported that the boy was unharmed, but was wearing blood-soaked pants.

"Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch. "As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their Chabad House was popular among the local community, as well as with visiting businesspeople.

"For five years, they ran a synagogue and Torah classes, and helped people dealing with drug addiction and poverty," continued the statement. "Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started.".

The Holtzbergs arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to serve the small local Jewish community, visiting businesspeople and the throngs of tourists, many of them Israeli, who annually travel to the seaside city.

Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, was born in Israel and moved to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., with his parents, when he was nine. A prodigious student, Holtzberg was a two-time champion in a competition of memorizing the Mishnah, a compendium of rabbinical laws and enactments redacted in the second century C.E.

He studied at yeshivas in New York and Argentina, and as a rabbinical student served communities in Thailand and China under the Summer Rabbinical Visitation Program run by Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch.

His 28-year-old wife, born Rivka Rosenberg, is a native of Afula, Israel. Chayki Rosenberg described her sister as dedicated to helping Jews.

She “gives lots of classes for women at the Chabad House,” Rosenberg told The Jerusalem Post.

Friends described her as always having a positive outlook and a kind word for everyone.

Two years ago, the Holtzbergs raised funds to purchase the current location of the Chabad House, a five-story building in Mumbai’s Colaba market area known as Narimon House. A trained ritual circumciser and slaughterer, the rabbi also conducted weddings for local Jewish couples in addition to teaching Torah classes and visiting with tourists.

His last known phone call was to the Israeli Consulate to report that gunmen were in his house. In the middle of the conversation, the line went dead.

The Holtzbergs joined the more than 125 people who were killed in the Wednesday night through Friday attacks, which saw dozens of suspected Islamic terrorists come ashore in Mumbai near the Gateway of India monument. The terrorists, carrying assault rifles and grenades, quickly fanned out to a central train station, the Chabad House and other tourist locations, including several popular hotels.

According to security services, the Chabad House was a pre-selected target.Rivkah Holtzberg cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of a Jewish ritual bath in Mumbai.

A team of 15 Chabad-Lubavitch representatives in California, New York, Washington, Israel, India and Bangkok worked the phones throughout the crisis, spending long, sleepless nights awaiting any morsel of information and working to confirm at-times conflicting reports from the field. Hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world prayed for the Holtzbergs, saying Psalms in their merit.

The local police in Mumbai and the highest reaches of the Indian government got involved, but military assault teams first concentrated their efforts on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, where hundreds of foreign tourists were either holed up or being held hostage. When they finally entered the Chabad House on Friday, they found that the worst had occured.

Rivky Holtzberg's parents, Rabbi Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg arrived in Mumbai early Friday morning to bring their now-orphaned grandson home to family.

To contribute to a fund established to aid relief efforts in Mumbai, go to www.ChabadIndia.org.

This is the story of a particular police officer, William Vize. There is a subtext of the article that deals with the difficulty of policing, and the impact on the officers' lives. A story worth reading, in my opinion.

By RICHARD GOLDSTEINPublished: February 28, 2011Frank Buckles, who drove an Army ambulance in France in 1918 and came to symbolize a generation of embattled young Americans as the last of the World War I doughboys, died Sunday at his home in Charles Town, W. Va. He was 110.

His death was announced by a family spokesman, David DeJonge, The Associated Press said.

He was only a corporal and he never got closer than 30 or so miles from the Western Front trenches, but Mr. Buckles became something of a national treasure as the last living link to the two million men who served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France in “the war to end all wars.”

Frail, stooped and hard of hearing, but sharp of mind, Mr. Buckles was named grand marshal of the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington in 2007. He was a guest at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day 2007 for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He was honored by Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon and met with President George W. Bush at the White House in March 2008.

United States Senators played host to him at the Capitol in June 2008 for the impending 90th anniversary of the World War I armistice. And he appeared before a Senate subcommittee in December 2009 to support legislation named in his honor to bestow federal status on a World War I memorial on the National Mall built in the 1930s.

Sought out for interviews in his final years, Mr. Buckles told of having witnessed a ceremony involving British veterans of the Crimean War, fought in the 1850s, when he was stationed in England before heading to France. He remembered chatting with General John J. Pershing, the commander of American troops in World War I, at an event in Oklahoma City soon after the war’s end.

And he proudly held a sepia-toned photograph of himself in his doughboy uniform when he was interviewed by USA Today in 2007. “I was a snappy soldier,” he said. “All gung-ho.”

Frank Woodruff Buckles was born Feb. 1, 1901, on a farm near Bethany, Mo. He was living in Oakwood, Okla., when America entered World War I and he tried to enlist in the Marine Corps at age 16, having been inspired by recruiting posters.

The Marines turned him down as underage and under the required weight. The Navy didn’t want him either, saying he had flat feet. But the Army took him in August 1917 when he lied about his age, and he volunteered to be an ambulance driver, hearing that was the quickest path to service in France.

He sailed for England in December 1917 on the Carpathia, the ship that helped save survivors of the Titanic’s sinking in 1912. He later served in various locations in France, including Bordeaux, and drove military autos and ambulances. He was touched by the war’s impact on the French people.

“The little French children were hungry,” Mr. Buckles recalled in a 2001 interview for the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress. “We’d feed the children. To me, that was a pretty sad sight.”

Mr. Buckles escorted German prisoners of war back to their homeland after the armistice, then returned to America and later worked in the Toronto office of the White Star shipping line.

He traveled widely over the years, working for steamship companies, and he was on business in Manila when the Japanese occupied it following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He was imprisoned by the Japanese, losing more than 50 pounds, before being liberated by an American airborne unit in February 1945.

After retiring from steamship work in the mid-1950s, Mr. Buckles ran a cattle farm in Charles Town, and he was still riding a tractor there at age 104.

In April 2007, Mr. Buckles was identified by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs as one of the four known survivors among the more than 4.7 million Americans who had served in the armed forces of the Allied nations between April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.

Two of the four — J. Russell Coffey and Harry Landis — had served stateside in the American Army. Mr. Coffey died in December 2007 at 109 and Mr. Landis died in February 2008 at 108. John Babcock, who was Canadian born, served in Canada’s army in Britain in World War I and held dual American and Canadian citizenship, died in Spokane, Wash., in February 2010 at 109.

The last known veterans of the French and German armies in World War I, Lazare Ponticelli and Erich Kästner, died a few months apart in 2008; Harry Patch, the last British soldier, died in 2009. A former nurse and a former sailor, both English, are thought to be the only two people still living who served in any capacity in the war.

Mr. Buckles is survived by his daughter, Susannah Flanagan. His wife, Audrey, died in 1999.

More than eight decades after World War I ended, Mr. Buckles retained images of his French comrades. And he thought back to the fate that awaited them.

“What I have a vivid memory of is the French soldiers — being in a small village and going in to a local wine shop in the evening,” he told a Library of Congress interviewer. “They had very, very little money. But they were having wine and singing the ‘Marseillaise’ with enthusiasm. And I inquired, ‘What is the occasion?’ They were going back to the front. Can you imagine that?”

One of a many who interrupted their young adult lives to go defeat Adolf Hitler and Nazism, he served under General Patton behind front lines in a medical crew- in England, France and Germany including the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. I didn't know until now, looking for dates and info in his documents, that his unit received a long list of awards and medals.

Joining his own father in dental practice, he served generations of patients for 63 years and taught in the University Dental School for a quarter century. He skied in the mountains and played golf and tennis with us through age 88.

One of a many who interrupted their young adult lives to go defeat Adolf Hitler and Nazism, he served under General Patton behind front lines in a medical crew- in England, France and Germany including the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. I didn't know until now, looking for dates and info in his documents, that his unit received a long list of awards and medals.

Joining his own father in dental practice, he served generations of patients for 63 years and taught in the University Dental School for a quarter century. He skied in the mountains and played golf and tennis with us through age 88.

Occasionally some of his remarks were over the top but 95% of the time he got it right from my point of view. He loved America. I saw him give a talk once. Must have been around 1989 at some synagogue in North Jersey somewhere.

He was Italian. He was always a friend of Israel.

OF course his controversial remarks will be the headlines and anything rational logical and pro American will be ignored by the MSM. He was far more objective than any of those on the far left. For example he recently (about a year ago) praised Cuomo for doing a good job in NY. How is that for crossing party lines? Has anyone from the NYT or MSNBC EVER given a good word for a Republican?